History

All histories are written with some biases. The four renowned gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are beautifully written, and as most christians would tell you are designed to proclaim that Jesus is the son of God and that he died and suffered on the cross for the sins of the world.

But on careful inspection you might find that the gospels do not always agree with each other on what it is they are trying to persuade. Evidence in Paul’s letters suggest that soon after the Jesus was crucified disagreements as to what his life, ministry, and death actually meant were had among his most zealous of followers. Consider in Paul’s letter how he tells people to not give “heed to Jewish fables, and commandments of men, that turn from the truth” (Titus 1:14) or in Galatians where he says “I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel” (Galations 1:6). In fact that whole chapter shows Paul defending himself. Paul also says the “gospel of the uncircumcision was committed unto” him as “the gospel of the circumscision was unto Peter” (Galations 2:7).

Most scholars also seem to believe that the gospels as we have them were written several decades after the events occured. Mark being the first and John being the last. There are also other gospels, such as the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Peter (though we have little of it) that were not canonized (probably due to their not agreeing with the predominate doctrines taught in Christianity at the time.

In short: We have 4 gospels that are not in complete harmony, many different Christian churches as soon as 30 years after Jesus death, and other gospels which are not recognized as holy write though at some time some people did in fact believe them.

What is to be done with all this? Well, given we have much more scholarly books, seminars, a better understanding of the world during the New Testament times, it seems that the time is ripe for a new Gospel. And why not? After all, if you see what was written by Luke in the first few verses you may come to the conclusion that he did not see the events he narrates in person but received them from eyewitnesses and “they delivered them unto us”, and it seemed “good to” him to write it for Theophilus. It is also theorized that Luke had the book of Mark and another source called “Q” that both Luke and Matthew borrowed.

Therefore, the point of the Gospel of the Galileans is to reconstruct in a historical fiction an idea of what could have actually happened by taking into account historical records of what we know about the Roman world in Palestine, the existing Gospels, and some pure imagination. And if I am to be blamed by adding imagination, then I am not the first. For even the original Gospel writers surely had some imagination to add in there. Consider the account in John with Nicodemus where Nicodemus is confused on the word that talks about being “born from above” or “born again” which in Greek is a pun but not so in Aramaic, the language Jesus most likely spoke. Likewise the trials of Jesus where the accounts diverge and we struggle to know what eyewitnesses were there to record them.

As such the work I present in the Gospel of the Galileans is of mostly fiction, will change as I revise it, and will probably not make any sense to anyone. I write it for my own amusement as I find it more satisfying than binge watching Netflix or watching my favorite football team lose all the time. If you happened to stumble here on this, I hope you enjoy it.

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